


Jentacular

by sapphireswimming



Series: Bouffage [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Castle of Lions (Voltron) - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food, Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, Hunk & Shiro (Voltron) Friendship, Hunk (Voltron) Cooks, Hunk (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Much Needed Pep Talks, One Shot, Season/Series 01, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26417452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphireswimming/pseuds/sapphireswimming
Summary: Shiro could use some tea. Or, at least, what passes for tea out here in space.
Relationships: Hunk & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Bouffage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920139
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Jentacular

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cthulhu_with_a_fez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_with_a_fez/gifts).



> Originally posted here: https://sapphireswimming.tumblr.com/post/154940110259/jentacular-a-voltron-fic
> 
> **Jentacular** ( _adj._ ), of or pertaining to breakfast
> 
> For [cthulhu_with_a_fez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_with_a_fez/pseuds/cthulhu_with_a_fez), beta'd by the fantastic [PuppetMaster55](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuppetMaster55)

Hunk set his alarm extra early the next day. When it started clanging, though, he slammed his hand over to the nightstand to silence it and groaned, wishing he could just stay in bed for a few more hours.

A moment later, he realized somewhere in the back of his bleary mind that that was, technically, an entirely viable option. But he had big plans for the morning, so he reluctantly rolled out of bed and got dressed, yawning as he tied his hair back without glancing in the mirror.

The nice thing about the artificially lit, windowless corridors that comprised most of the castle’s hallways was that it was impossible to see outside. Most of the time, Hunk didn’t fully appreciate the fact that, from a glance, you couldn’t tell whether the sun had risen or not. Right now, he could still pretend that it was much later than it was—that he had slept in and it was already late morning as he made his way out of his room.

His first stop was one of the main open rooms where Pidge had taken up a semi-permanent residence when they weren’t all out trying to form Voltron and survive Allura’s violent versions of training exercises.

Pidge was there now, he realized, sleeping against a column, computer propped up in her lap and limbs tangled in computer cords. She hadn’t even bothered changing into pajamas or taking her shoes off. In fact, it looked like she hadn’t meant to get ready for bed at all, but had just fallen asleep in the middle of her work, because the computer was still whirring and the screen was alight with all the programs the computer was running.

Shaking his head, Hunk knelt down to take the computer out of her lap and set it safely on the floor so that it couldn’t fall or get crushed in her sleep, but her grip tightened convulsively on the cords as soon as they started moving and despite his best efforts, he couldn’t get them to budge.

Realizing he wasn’t going to win the tug-of-war without waking Pidge up, he gave a whispered laugh and said, “Okay, okay, fine, keep the computer. Don’t blame me when you end up rolling over on top of it one of these days. But why don’t you at least—” he stood to grab the blanket that was sitting just a few feet away, still folded neatly. He shook it out and then laid it on top of her, computer and all.

“There,” he said, satisfied with his work.

“Now don’t mind me,” he told her with a wave of his hand even though he knew she wasn’t going to hear him. “I’m just getting some of the stuff we scanned the other day…”

He moved over toward the wall where he and Pidge had carefully laid out a spread of the local flora and fauna they’d collected from Arus so far. They hadn’t finished scanning everything yet, of course, but the plants they’d had a chance to fully analyze were catalogued and grouped into neat piles.

Little note cards with Hunk’s loopy handwriting gave key points of information about each of them— “this should taste GOOD” “research effects of dried leaves on the mice… possibly a form of mice catnip” “don’t mix with the orange spiky thing” “plant that tastes like chicken?” “DO NOT INGEST UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES” “Lance, please don’t take anything from this pile, we’ll get you more for your facial” “not fit for Altean consumption… human earthlings only” and “space potatoes!”

He grabbed several bunches of plants from select piles, as well as a careful armful from the huge mound of potatoes, and then set off for the kitchen, grinning to himself the entire way.

Laying out all of the ingredients on the shining countertop, Hunk took a step back to survey them all at once. He spread them out further, trying to make decisions about exactly what he was planning to do and how to go about tackling it.

He started pinching off leaves from the various bunches and biting into them, chewing them up until he got a good sense of their flavor. He began humming as he rearranged the piles, putting some of the plants closer together, taking all but a few branches of one away, and wavering on whether or not to remove another one to the other side of the kitchen entirely.

Then he got to work, opening cabinet doors and pulling out various shaped pots and pans, a cutting board, some measuring cups—for units of measurement he didn’t recognize, of course, but he thought he could vaguely eyeball a cup through the lines—and a couple knives, before starting to prepare his many vegetables.

He’d been working for maybe half an hour when a stifled noise out in the hallway caught his attention. Frowning, he set down his knife and leaned back to get a good look at the door just in time to see Shiro stop abruptly in the doorway, almost looking startled at the fact that the light was on and there was movement inside the mess hall.

“Hunk?” he asked, a little oddly, before Hunk had a chance to say anything. “What… are you… doing up?” he asked, sounding confused.

“I’m… cooking,” Hunk replied simply, before getting a good look at Shiro’s pale face. He frowned at the bags beneath his eyes and the way his hand held onto the door frame, but Shiro didn’t seem to notice, which made him worry even more.

“What are _you_ doing up?” he asked in return, trying to sound like he hadn’t already guessed the answer.

Shiro walked into the room almost in a haze. “I was… uh… checking the perimeter…” he trailed off as he fell into a chair, wearily rubbing both hands down his face until, with a jolt, he pulled them both away, shoving the right hand out of sight in his lap.

Hunk stared at Shiro for a moment before coming to a decision. He turned and rummaged through the kitchen drawers again, careful to keep his movements as quiet as possible as he grabbed a cup and another pot and began to heat up some water.

He located a sleek canister above the stove and, after he popped off the lid and got a whiff of its contents, he pulled it down and measured out a couple heaping spoonfuls into a strainer inside the waiting cup. Soon, the water was hot enough to pour over the leaves so they could steep. When the water became a honey-tinged shade of orange, he decided that was probably good enough.

After pulling out the leaves and placing them in the sink to drain, he turned to slide the steaming mug in front of Shiro, who jerked a little at the unexpected movement right beneath his nose.

He blinked up at Hunk, who explained that it was the Altean equivalent of tea. “So don’t expect it to actually taste like tea,” he warned seriously. “Because it doesn’t. At all,” he confided with a dissatisfied shake of his head.

“But I’m working on finding a good mix of stuff from the plants Pidge and I dried,” he said. “We’ve been picking samples every time we find something new,” he explained. “And once I find out more about them and what they taste like and what they taste like _together_ and get them dried, of course, hopefully I’ll be able to come up with something better than this. Something like a nice regular green tea. Or Earl Grey. Or chamomile,” he added, leaning against the other side of the island and propping his face in his hand. “Chamomile would be good. My mom always used to give me some chamomile when I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

Then he shrugged a little. “But this is what we’ve got for now,” he said, nodding toward the cup in Shiro’s hands.

Shiro thanked him and carefully wrapped both of his hands around it even though only one of them could feel the heat seeping through the sides of the mug. He just sat there for a moment, as the aromatic steam wafted up around him in curling wisps.

Hunk decided to let him be for the moment, and turned back around to his cutting board to give Shiro some space.

Eventually, Shiro took a sip of the tea. Hunk turned around at the soft hum.

“So? What do you think?” he asked with a bit of a grin.

“It’s… definitely not tea,” Shiro answered. “But it’s not… bad?” he decided after another sip. “Just different.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed easily. “Everything around here’s different,” he said, reaching for a pile of the leafy branches on the counter and starting to peel the leaves off one by one. “At least the tea’s not too bad, though. Not like the nectar of the gods or whatever else Coran’s tried to shove on us. Did you know Coran told Lance that they used that stuff as hair tonic too?” he asked.

He turned back with a grin to see Shiro cradling his forehead in his left hand. He stopped, wondering if something was wrong, but then Shiro took a deep breath and muttered, “You know, it’s times like this that I even miss the peas we had on Kerberos.”

“Peas?” Hunk asked with a raised eyebrow.

Shiro nodded and picked his head up, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Yeah,” he said, “Commander Holt really… had this thing for peas. I don’t know why. But I think he managed to convince the suppliers to give us double or triple the normal allotment of peas for our mission. We had them _all the time_ ,” he said, emphasizing each word.

Hunk leaned back against the counter and laughed. “Oh man, that sounds rough,” he said. “But yeah, I think all of us even miss the Garrison food. And the food at the Garrison… well,” he trailed off, “you know how bad that was.”

Shiro smiled wanly. “Well, it could be a whole lot worse,” he said, staring into his tea. “The goo is at least a step up from Galra prison food.”

Hunk’s grin faltered at that, not having considered this before. But before coming to the castle, Shiro had been imprisoned, and had been on a long mission in space before that. It must have been years since Shiro had had real home-cooked earth food. Years that he’d been eating freeze dried vegetables and goop and worse.

“But not by much,” Shiro offered with a wry grin and a tilt of his head before he went back to his tea.

Hunk didn’t answer, but puttered around the kitchen trying to think of what he could say to make Shiro feel better. Quickly, he realized that nothing he said could make Shiro feel better. Of course not, after all he’d been through— how could it?

Hunk couldn’t do anything to erase the time Shiro had spent imprisoned or even the nightmares it left him with, the ones that left him shaking in the morning even though all of the paladins tried to pretend they didn’t notice.

But he might be able to do something about the Galra tech that was spasming near the mug of tea, and the vaguely haunted look that still lingered on Shiro’s pinched features.

“Yeah,” Hunk said, a bit awkwardly, before making up his mind and plowing on. “Well, that’s why I’ve decided to do something about the state of food around here,” he said, with forced levity.

Shiro blinked up at him, obviously making an effort to bring himself fully into the moment. “Oh yeah?” he asked with a faint grin.

“Yep!” Hunk said. “Now that we’ve got some local vegetation that we know won’t kill us, I’m trying to experiment a little bit. You know, mix things up. Get some solid food. Vegetables, herbs, potatoes…!”

“You found potatoes?” Shiro asked in surprise.

“Eh… kinda?” Hunk hedged. “They’re tubers, I think. Or, at least, related to tubers. So. Space potatoes. Or as close as we’ll get for now,” Hunk shrugged, pushing the leaves into a pile and hefting them up to put them in the pan. “Keith couldn’t tell the difference. I haven’t tried anything fancy yet,” he admitted, picking bits of leaves off of his fingers, “but Keith and Lance both liked what I whipped up the other day. So I decided to get up early and surprise everyone with a paladin breakfast! Which will, hopefully, I mean if all goes well, be much better than the paladin lunch. At least…” he broke off to make a face, “it won’t be all green and nasty tasting and made entirely of goo. Which is almost all that matters, really, at this point.”

“You got that right,” Shiro said, taking another sip from his mug.

Hunk nodded to himself, and hesitated for a moment before saying, “So, if you could peel those…” he said, pointing to the other side of the counter.

Shiro sputtered a bit in surprise, trying not to spit out his tea. “Uh, what?” he asked, recovering quickly.

“Can you peel the space potatoes?” Hunk asked, pretending this was a completely normal thing to ask a person to do.

“Um,” Shiro hedged. “I don’t… I’m really not…” he said before sighing. Then he steeled himself, his face coming under control in the few seconds while Hunk watched. When he spoke again, his voice was almost back to normal. “Okay… space potatoes,” he said to himself, pushing up from his chair and coming around the island to the counter.

Moving to Hunk’s left, he found a pile of tubers ready and waiting for someone to peel them.

“There should be a peeler in that drawer,” Hunk pointed with a leafless branch. “Or, at least what I think is a peeler. It’s kinda hard to tell with some of this stuff, you know? Sometimes it’s super cool being in an alien castle ship thingy, but sometimes, it’s just… confusing.”

Shiro opened the drawer and rifled between various strange looking kitchen utensils. He finally pulled out his best guess at a peeler. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he said, prodding the tip with his finger. “This should work, though, I think,” he said, holding it up for inspection.

Hunk nodded in agreement, and pointed out the trash chute.

Shiro stepped up next to Hunk, then, and picked up his first potato, trying to get a feel for the peeler. As he got the hang of how the device worked best, the pile began to dwindle. The repetitive motion made some of the tension ease from his shoulders as the minutes passed.

They worked in silence, apart from the sounds of cooking—the peeler working through the flesh of the tubers, the peelings falling into the chute, Hunk’s knife slicing through leaves to the cutting board, the knocking of the spoon against the pot, and the occasional requests to pass something across the counter.

It was comfortable, working side by side, but eventually Shiro broke the silence. “I don’t really do this, you know,” he remarked when he was down to cutting his last few potatoes.

Hunk turned from stirring a new pinch of herbs into the sautéing greens. “Huh?” he asked. “Don’t do what?”

Shiro gave a half shrug and spread his hands out in front of him. “This,” he said, gesturing to their entire setup. “Cooking.”

He cut the next tuber in half and then turned the pieces sideways so he could cube them more easily. Hunk tried to look as open and inviting to conversation as possible with a knife in hand, slicing and crushing various bunches of leaves before throwing them into the pan.

“I mean real cooking,” Shiro continued. “I can take care of myself and have several years of experience opening up space rations, but… I’ve never really spent quality time in a kitchen,” he said thoughtfully.

Hunk glanced over at him, wondering where he was going with this.

“It’s a lot of work to put this together,” he said. “What you’re doing is really impressive.”

Hunk all but gaped at Shiro, wondering if he’d misheard or misunderstood because, “No, it’s not really that- I mean,” he broke off, “it’s… just…”

Shiro carefully set his potato down on the cutting board, watching it for a moment to make sure it wouldn’t roll of the edge of the counter before taking a step toward Hunk and gesturing to the many bowls and pots and piles of ingredients ranged in front of him.

“Hunk,” he said seriously. “You’ve gathered alien food, analyzed it both to deem it safe and to understand how everything interacts together, and you’ve gotten up before sunrise, on your own, without being asked, to come in here and spend a couple hours creating a recipe for seven people, from scratch. By yourself. And not just any meal, but one that any restaurant on earth would be proud to serve.”

Hunk flushed, then tried to laugh it off. “Oh come on,” he said with a chuckle. ”You haven’t even tasted it yet,” he said. “It could be just as bad as that slug thing Coran tried to make us eat.”

Shiro raised an eyebrow at Hunk. “From the way Keith and Lance were raving about the lunch you made them the other day, I’d say you have nothing to worry about on that score.”

Hunk looked up. “Wait, what, really? They were raving? About my lunch?”

Shiro picked up his potato again and smiled at Hunk. “Wouldn’t stop talking about it,” he confirmed.

“Huh,” was all Hunk said for a moment, before shoveling the last pile of greens into the pot and stirring the contents with his spoon before turning up the heat a few notches.

“But I mean,” he blurted out, “it’s not like I’m doing this all by myself,” he pointed out with a significant look to Shiro. “I mean Lance helped me pick some of this stuff and sort it and then Pidge was the one who came up with a way to really analyze it properly and Keith was my guinea pig yesterday and now you’re in here helping me make stuff,” he said. “It’s not like it’s just me,” he said, staring intently into the pot as it began to make a soft sizzling noise.

Shiro smiled at him softly. “Don’t be so quick to downplay what you’re doing, Hunk. You’re the mastermind here. Other people may be helping you out but we’re all following your lead. I wouldn’t have any clue how to start developing a recipe for this meal. The most I can do is… cut up tubers.”

“That’s not true,” Hunk was quick to counter. “I’m sure you could do this and, and probably do it better than me. I mean, it’s really not that hard, it’s just throwing stuff together…”

“Hunk,” Shiro said, cutting in a little forcefully. “That’s not true at all.”

Hunk stared at the spoon in his hand, trying to wrap his head around what Shiro was saying. And he knew, of course, to some level, that Shiro was probably right. Not the part about Shiro not being able to do more than cut up potatoes because Hunk was pretty sure Shiro could do anything he tried to do, but… cooking was complicated. Even with ingredients you recognized. It took a lot of thought and concentration and calculations to figure out the right balance between flavors, and keep all of the steps in order, and—

“Besides,” Shiro continued, “you’ve really helped the team come together.”

Hunk tilted his head in confusion. “I have?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Shiro said. “Boosting team morale, increasing the amount of innovation and thinking outside the box and creativity and teamwork,” he counted them off on his fingers. “You’ve been doing a lot for Team Voltron,” he said, seriously. “You’ve been helping everyone work together and come together more. And I want you to know how much we all appreciate it.”

He smiled, and added, “And how much we appreciate the prospect of eating something other than goo for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until the end of time.”

Hunk stared at him, eyes going kind of misty. Then he sniffed and turned back to his pot. “Darn onions,” he said by way of explanation, even though they both knew perfectly well that there were no onions there at all, space or otherwise.

Shiro turned back to finish cutting up the last of the potatoes. “So what now?” he asked.

“Um,” Hunk said, looking around to survey the scene. “These are pretty wilted now, so I’m gonna take them off the heat and we’ll start the sauce next, I think, because then we can use some of that base when we cook the tubers and that might help flavor them and break them down a bit more?”

He looked over at Shiro as if looking for confirmation that this was the right thing to do, then stopped, and decided that, of course, it was the right thing to do. He nodded decisively.

“Sounds great,” Shiro said, offering to retrieve the necessary goo.

He grabbed the bowl Hunk handed to him and crossed to the goo filling station, squeezing the nozzle in the wall until he had more than enough of the now overly familiar green sludge that had comprised their main source of daily nutrition thus far.

As he plopped the unappetizing bowl down on the counter, he said, “Time for you to work your magic,” and Hunk grinned.

They worked together quietly for the next hour, Shiro taking over the prepping of the last few potential ingredients as Hunk started measuring out various quantities and pouring them into the mix, stirring, tasting, and making adjustments all the while.

At Hunk’s request, Shiro started writing down notes from which Hunk could create a recipe later when everything had been finalized. He wrote down how much of what ingredient went into which bowl and when, crossing off Hunk’s instructions when he backpedaled and decided to try something else instead.

It was a tricky process, at first, because Shiro frankly had no idea what any of the things they were working with even were, besides the tubers. It took Hunk a couple tries to remember that he needed to explain what he was talking about, pointing out the herbs as he named them, detailing what they were like and what he hoped they would do for his culinary concoction.

The smells from the various pans wafted through the air, mixing mouth-wateringly, and, despite knowing that the base of the sauce was the Altean goo he’d despised since he first tasted it, Shiro had to admit that it smelled good. On its way to delicious, even.

Hunk offered him a taste test as they started getting to the fine-tuning stages near the end of the cooking process.

“It’s really good,” he said, eyebrows raised in pleasant surprise as he savored his spoonful. “Now that’s impressive…” he said.

“Thanks,” Hunk grinned back. “Although I think I want to add a little more…” he waved his hand as he tried to think, “something… to it. Maybe the tube-y thing?” he wondered, pulling some blades out and rubbing them between his fingers to release the scent. He sniffed, then took another sip of the broth to compare.

“Hmmmm,” he said. “I wish we had more spices, you know?” he lamented. “But the only thing I’ve really found is the salt… thing. Salt thing. It’s pink, though, but I think it’s basically salt…?”

He shook some salt into the pan, and eventually settled on adding a pinch of one herb and one more branch of another, stirring them into the sauce and then declaring it, “Good enough for today.”

He surveyed their handiwork with a smile and said, “Well, I think that’s pretty much it, except putting it all together and then adding the garnishes on top. And that can wait until everyone’s up.”

“Sounds good,” Shiro said, leaning up against the counter and grabbing his now very lukewarm cup of tea. He looked at it for a minute before taking a sip and pulling back with a grimace. He stared between the cup and the full stovetop for a minute and then his right hand flared to life, glowing purple-white for a moment before going back to normal.

His cup was steaming again. He considered it for a second before blowing on the rest of his tea and continuing to drink.

Hunk stole a glance and noted with relief that Shiro looked much more put together now than he had when he first stumbled through the door that morning. His hands had stopped shaking, even if it had taken a while, and he’d even used his prosthetic as a convenient portable microwave and seemed content that it wouldn’t throttle him afterward.

All in all, Hunk counted the cooking session a win.

He’d just moved the pots and pans onto their burners and adjusted the knobs to the right temperature to keep them warm when there was a movement in the doorway.

He and Shiro both turned to see Keith standing there looking confused.

“Hey,” he said, glancing between the two of them. “What’s… going on?”

“Breakfast!” Hunk replied brightly.

Keith looked at them, then at the stove, and then glanced over at the goo dispensing station. “So… you’re making breakfast? Not the goo?” he asked, voice full of tentative hope.

“Yep! And we can eat whenever everyone’s ready,” he said.

“Awesome,” Keith replied, moments before his stomach gave a particularly loud grumble.

He was ready to glare at anyone who dared comment, but Shiro just smiled and set his mug down, saying, “I think I’ll go get the others.”

“Oh, thanks, Shiro!” Hunk said. “I think Pidge is still down the hall,” he added before Shiro could walk out the door.

Shiro turned back, hand on the doorframe, and smiled. “Thanks, Hunk,” he said, simply, but Hunk realized he meant it for more than just this last bit of information. And then he left the room.


End file.
